


To an Outside Observer

by anillogicalmind



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Clint Needs a Hug, Denial, Everyone can see it but them, F/M, Missions, UST, and isn't that always the way?, multi-chapter, so does natasha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-19 22:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anillogicalmind/pseuds/anillogicalmind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of two people who don't have a clue, and aren't particularly keen on looking for answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ, but as the chapters go on I'll be cross-posting. 
> 
> And I owe an absolutely mahoosive thanks, and all the love to im_ridiculous who has been ridiculously (eheh) patient and generally wonderful thoughout this process and helped me to turn this something people MIGHT just want to read.
> 
> And also to lar_laughs who was such a great help at the start of this thing.

To an outside observer, the young couple making their way across the crowded room was a perfect cliché.

He was handsome, she was beautiful. They appeared to exist within the perfect synchronization that comes from being utterly absorbed in one another, sparing glances around the room only to whisper another hushed comment into the other’s ear; earning a smile, possibly a laugh, a brush of the lips against a cheek.

To an outside observer, the young couple making their way across the crowded room was in love.

To those with a high enough security clearance, the young couple could be identified as SHIELD Agents Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff, on their first partnered mission since Barton had brought Romanoff into the secure SHIELD facility six months prior.

And as for being in love?

It was quite the opposite. If they weren’t relying on their present, affectionate cover to make themselves utterly forgettable, and therefore survive, they fought ceaselessly. From landing heavier than necessary blows during sparring sessions, to exchanging disdainful sneers in the corridors, their fierce rivalry and open distaste for each other was quickly becoming legendary within the organization. Rumours about what had happened between them in Budapest abounded.

To those actually in the know, opinion differed wildly. As a result, facts could not be confirmed, because of course those in the know numbered a grand total of two.

Clint Barton found the entire situation terribly amusing and went out of this way to get a rise out of the usually unflappable Romanoff. He took great pleasure in goading her until she lashed out, gleefully irritating her ( _like a rash_ , as she’d so often dryly observe) and prodding her ‘til she either flipped him off or flipped him onto his back. Hard. 

He had never seen her be anything but impassive around everyone else in the time she’d been at SHIELD, and he felt some twisted privilege that he was privy to a display of… emotion? Personality? Humanity? 

Whatever it was, he enjoyed it -- looked forward to it even. He even felt that the bruises and fractures he had gained were worth it, a bizarre accolade, a testament to his skills in being an annoying little twerp. Not to mention the fact that his form had been consistently improving since Natasha had arrived, and he was no beginner to start with.

It had become a game to him; the carny seeing if he could hit the mark, tip the bucket, anything to draw a reaction from her. It didn’t matter if it was a glare, a curse, or a flash of teeth in a feral grin, all that mattered was that he was a sucker for a pretty face. Especially one who could kick his ass.

Natasha Romanoff, on the other hand, thought the whole ordeal was just frustrating. And confusing. She hated being confused. She didn’t do confused. She did cool, calm logic. 

She most certainly didn’t leave a mess behind.

Clint Barton was messy. He was brash, he was loud and he was frustrating. And so she found herself kicking harder, flinging scowls at him instead of remaining behind a cool mask of indifference. He infuriated her and yet somehow, somehow, he started to infiltrate her defenses.

He offered to spar with her when nobody else would. Initially, it was with heavily exaggerated sighs and mutters about getting her up to standard. However, after a few bouts with him on the mats, that left her panting and him winded, they settled into a pattern of sparring together.

His snarky comments that had originally preceded their matches were replaced with a sharp tilt of the head when he found her, and an easy drawl of her name as he headed towards the gym. She’d find him waiting for her, often hanging off one of the pullup bars, upside down and perfectly at ease. 

Then, though he was clearly trying to give the impression that he was doing anything but (as if he’d _ever_ normally be anywhere near the admin levels if he didn’t have to be) she’d catch him checking up on her, hanging around outside doors when she was pulled into yet another drab office. 

He even tried to find out more about her, asking questions over tepid cups of coffee in the mess hall after long hours spent in the gym that, before she’d realised it was happening, had somehow become part of her daily routine.

Natasha was disturbed to discover that she only resented his questions because she still didn’t have any answers. 

How do you tell someone more about yourself when you don’t know who that is? 

But most of all, she hated the fact that he made her want to find out. It was unsettling.

***

The whispered sweet nothings as they traversed the room were merely the easiest way to share information about the mark and the bodyguards he had scattered across the room... The first brushes of lips across the cheek were a surprise, the soft press of her mouth against his face crossing a carefully drawn line. 

Their game had been upped a level. 

Natasha raised an eyebrow at Clint as he winked salaciously back at her, tightening his grip on her waist. She managed to dig her heel into his shoe, grinding down, covering it by pretending to stumble, smoothing it over with a hand on his chest (nails digging in like talons) another kiss against his cheek, a report on the second henchman over by the bar, and a sharp nip of teeth at his lobe, grazing along the skin. 

He laughed, and pulled her over to a mercifully empty booth, cutting off the blood supply to her fingers as he tugged her along, shoving her onto the padded bench – hard enough to trip someone who hadn’t had years of training, but even she almost overbalanced. Clint grinned and batted his lashes. Ridiculous man. At least, of course, now they had a clear view of the entire room, the mark directly within their line of sight.

She slid her hand down his thigh, rubbing her thumb over the pressure point in his knee before pushing against it, hard, and Clint retaliated in kind. She twisted around, mouth near his neck, but any further actions were cut short by Clint muttering low in her ear.

“The mark‘s on the move; heading towards the terrace. Shall we?”

Natasha nodded briskly, double checking the weapons she had holstered on her thighs, the small vial of tranquilizer inside the cup of her bra, all under the guise of smoothing down her dress.

“How do you want to play this?” Clint asked, voice rough against her neck.

She suppressed a shudder at the close contact. She hated people near her neck -- and normally wouldn’t let anyone get that close. It made irritation coil low in her gut and her hackles rise, tiny goose bumps forming peaks along her arms. 

Natasha paused for a moment, disconcerted to find herself needing to actively steady her breath. She hoped it would simply appear as if she were taking her time to collect her thoughts and formulate a motive before she replied. 

“Lovers’ tiff? He’s been watching us all night. He’s interested. You be the one to walk away. It will give you time to get into position. I’ll fall into the nice man’s arms, get the memory stick, tranq and walk. You just make sure you’re watching. I don’t want any interruptions.”

“Sounds like a plan. Make sure you actually switch your comm link on though, I need to be able to hear you in case visual contact’s lost.”

“Whatever, Barton. You know I will. Just do your job. Get ready to be a jackass. It shouldn’t be hard. ”

“There are a lot of things that shouldn’t be hard that are.” He muttered.

She pretended not to hear, linking their hands as she strode across the room, out towards the terrace that led into the hotel’s expansive grounds, where they would lay their trap.

***

Two years on and one hundred and eighty six partnered missions later (not that _she’s_ counting, but he is, and he enjoys reminding her) something that resembles respect has sprung up between the pair. 

It would be impossible for it not to really. There’s only so many times a person can save your life before something gives (and this time she’s the one keeping the tally. By her count, he’s delayed the inevitable a total of twenty eight times on her behalf, and she has only managed a comparatively paltry nineteen. The imbalance grates.)

And by all accounts, they are already SHIELD’s most successful partnership in the history of the organisation. 

They slip in and out of their various covers with ease. Playing the part of jealous lovers is both effective and startlingly easy. Natasha puts it down to proximity, Clint assigns it to base attractiveness. Neither of them would ever admit to giving the matter any thought. 

They fight together fluidly, instinctively covering each other’s weak spots and occasionally taking hits intended for the other. The only explanation ever offered -- and accepted -- is a brief ‘You’re my partner.’ And if either of them ever cared to give the statement any thought, they’d realise that it explains everything and nothing, so it’s best left alone. 

Long hours and rapid switches between time-zones mean that they are running on a schedule unique to themselves. By way of default, they end up spending most of their time together. 

When Clint finds himself seeking Natasha’s company on a rare off-day, he chalks it up to the comfort found through a host of shared experiences, and the advantage of having a partner in the field that’s fully assimilated with all areas of popular western culture. Which is why he finds himself teaching her to play ‘Go Fish’ and then finds himself consistently losing.

After a while, Natasha finds herself forgetting to glare at Barton every time he calls her ‘Nat’. She’s better at remembering to do so when she’s referred to as ‘Tasha’, but even so, sometimes she finds herself too busy to do so. She blames his persistence. He tells her it’s part of his charm. 

She refuses to dignify that answer with a response. He refuses to stop.

They go on.

***

Three months later, Clint starts dating Bobbi Morse. 

Bobbi is two years his senior, slight, blonde and pretty with a light laugh and an outlook on the world to match (a direct contrast to Natasha’s rare smirks and decidedly grim world view, he thinks, before abruptly cutting that train of thought off). She’s only been a part of SHIELD for two months when he finds himself alone with her in the bar a few miles from base. 

He’s not entirely sure how exactly it happened. He knew how he’d gotten there of course; Tasha was on a rare solo op, and he was actually operating within the same timezone as the other SHIELD agents. He’d agreed to come in the interests of sociability, and in order to avoid another night staring at the ceiling. But it was on the detail of _how_ he’d come to be alone with Bobbi that he was a little hazy. He had a feeling he’d been set up.

***

He’d been hustling an unsuspecting civilian at darts, and returning to retrieve his abandoned jacket from the corner the other SHIELD agents had commandeered, he finds only Bobbi, smiling brightly at him. 

“The others left.” She explains, unnecessarily. “I said I’d wait. Still hadn’t finished my drink.” She gestures towards the half full bottle sitting in front of her. Condensation had gathered, pooling around it and onto the perpetually sticky wooden table. He can’t help but notice that she hasn’t used the beer mat, even though it’s lying askew right next to the beer. For some reason, it irritates him and too late, he realises he’s supposed to respond, even though she didn’t ask a question. 

“Oh, yeah. Right. Thanks.” 

It registers somewhere in the back of his brain that he’s forgotten how to do this. Then again, he recalls, he doesn’t think he ever knew how to do this. He plasters a smile on his face, hoping it doesn’t look too strained. 

It must work, because Bobbi smiles widely back at him, until her face shifts into something more demure. She looks up at him through slightly lowered lashes, blinking slowly, and he pushes away the thought that it makes her look a little vacuous, because he knows that SHIELD have a vigorous set of aptitude tests before basic training even begins. 

Then he realises that, oh god, this is a bona-fide seduction technique she’s using - he watches Nat do it all the time on unsuspecting marks. 

He’d bet money that she’s using it now in fact - in a lush suite in Abu Dhabi on a young, handsome heir to an oil dynasty with a little too much interest in ratcheting up international relations to a hostile level. He knows because he read the file while she packed, his feet propped up onto her tiny desk, chair tilted back precariously on two legs until she toppled it as punishment for putting his ‘disgusting’ feet on her stuff. 

He tamps down the rush of images that spring unbidden to his mind, along with the swell of protectiveness that burns along his throat when he thinks about Natasha on the job. 

He attributes it to too much alcohol (although when two watery beers over the course of several hours became _too much_ , he isn’t sure). 

Uncurling his fingers from where they’ve clenched so tightly around the back of the chair that his knuckles have gone white, Clint decides that he is, in fact, probably... no, _definitely_ just sexually frustrated and the solution to his problems is sitting prettily in front of him, still blinking. 

“Wanna get out of here?” He asks Bobbi, dragging his attention back to her before he can start thinking too hard and remember exactly how long it’s been since he did this. 

“Sure” She says, smiling brightly, and he absolutely does not think she shows too many teeth. He chooses not to think at all until they lie collapsed in a heap on her bed, her head resting on his chest as he runs his fingers through her long blond hair. 

“We should do that again.” She murmurs. 

“Give me twenty minutes.” He replies, and she laughs, shaking around him, sending vibrations through his chest. 

He lets himself laugh with her, and for the next month and a half, in between training and target practice, he brings her lunch and she brings him coffee. He helps her attempt to improve her aim, with some semblance of success. She wraps her arms around his waist as he shoots endless arrows on the range, breaking him out of his reverie and pulling him back to her room. He pretends he doesn’t mind until she makes him forget that he does. 

He wonders if he’s happy, and decides that it doesn’t matter.

He wonders if Bobbi is, and realises that it should matter more. 

Clint thinks that Bobbi deserves better, but refuses to be the first to bring it up. In fact, he actively avoids anything other than small, and bedroom, talk. She fills the silences with chatter of her own, and loves that he’s such a great listener. 

To an outside observer, it looks like it’s working. 

Somehow, he feels like the whole thing is a test, a warped experiment with no reliable control to compare to, results still pending and a pockmarked history of failures dating back through three generations of Barton’s to the current day: Clint Barton, Specimen 4B, observations still underway, testing the hypothesis that he can in fact create and sustain a viable relationship. Tentative extrapolation of current data with Bobbi Morse looks positive, but then, it always does at first and he’s fed up of failing. 

He decides he should just stop thinking and take the wide view. Enjoy it. 

Then Natasha comes home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natasha comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive thanks to im_ridiculous for being so patient and providing such great input. I am forever in your debt.

Coulson picks her up at the airport with a warm smile and a hot coffee. 

‘Welcome back, Natasha.’ he says, swapping the coffee for her luggage and looking her up and down appraisingly. ‘Have you been eating properly?’

She rolls her eyes.

‘You say that every time I have a solo op, Coulson. Of course I have. But now I’m looking forward to a shower and catching up on sleep, and then getting back into training properly. I could just _feel_ my tone slipping while I was out there. That guy was suffocating - I hardly even got a chance to stretch properly until after all of the intel was gathered and I could complete the objective.’

‘Ah,’ Coulson replies mildly as they approach the SUV, ‘You won’t have too much time to get back into the swing of things I’m afraid. You and Barton are needed to deal with a situation that’s just come up in Lebanon.’

‘How long have I got?’ she asks, already mourning the loss of the shower that would go some way towards making her feel clean of the cloying presence of the now-dead oil heir. 

‘You’ll have tonight back on base, it’s the best I could manage under the circumstances.’ he says apologetically. ‘I was only briefed on the way to collect you, Clint doesn’t know yet.’

‘You didn’t call him?’ she asks, surprised. ‘Things busy back on base?’

Coulson makes a noncommittal noise as he overtakes a large truck. Natasha takes it as a positive confirmation of her question, and an explanation for why Clint wasn’t waiting, slouched by the side of the car as they emerged, as per his usual habit when she went on a solo mission. 

Not that she cares, of course. 

Satisfied, she settles back into the seat to get a headstart on sleep as she allows one of the only two people in the world she trusts to take her home. 

***

She awakes as the car pulls smoothly into SHIELD's underground garage, accepting a briefing packet from Coulson as she steps into the elevator with him, and offering to take Clint’s with her - it makes sense after all, they were going to be working together once again. 

Coulson seems... reluctant, but after she assures him she’s fine, and really, she and Barton would be sharing all of their information on the op anyway, he eventually hands the thick files over before stepping out of the elevator with a brisk, ‘6 AM sharp, Natasha.’ as he exits. 

A few floors up, Natasha steps out, seeking Clint out in the range. 

He’s not there. 

Nor is he in the mess hall, the gym, on the roof, in the alcove above the fire escape on the east side of the building, in his room or hers. Confused, tired and irritated by Barton’s apparent evasiveness, Natasha heads back along the corridor to her quarters, resolving to just call him and have him come collect his own file. 

This turns out to be a completely unnecessary measure as Clint emerges from the room belonging to Bobbi Morse. 

He emerges from the room _attached_ to Bobbi Morse, his lips fused to hers and hands planted on her hips. 

Natasha freezes. 

Then she picks up her pace, brushing swiftly past the pair, scrubbing at her eyes as she rounds the corner. Fatigue must have caught up with her, she rationalises, her sight has actually gone blurry. 

Although that doesn’t explain the tightness in her throat or the irrational desire to punch a wall. 

A desperate voice cuts through the buzz of white noise inside her head as she approaches her door. 

‘Nat! Wait!’ He’s running along the corridor towards her as she slips her keycard in. ‘Nat...it’s not-’ 

She cuts him off. ‘It’s not anything to do with me.’

‘ _Tash_ ’ Clint says pleadingly. 

‘My name is Natasha.’ She replies sharply, shoving the thick briefing file into his hands, carefully avoiding contact with any part of him. ‘We have a mission in twelve hours.’ 

Then she shuts her door in his face, allowing herself to sink to the floor only once the lock clicks into position. 

Clint remains where he stopped, on the other side of the door, boring holes into the reinforced steel barrier with the intensity of his stare and clutching onto his mission briefing. His feet remain rooted to the spot until Bobbi catches up to him. 

‘Clint!’ She says, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. He lets her. ‘What the hell was that!? You just _dropped_ me. Right in the middle of the corridor, in front of anyone and everyone! How _embarrassing_. And then you just stalk off. I mean, what am I supposed to think, huh? Did I do something wrong?’ 

‘No...’ He begins half-heartedly, before Bobbi stops him by raising her palm, her eyes focussed on the door behind her. 

‘Oh.’ Bobbi says. ‘She’s back.’ 

‘Yeah’ He replies. ‘We, uh, have a mission.’ He flaps the thick folder in front of her. ‘Tomorrow. Early. I have to get some sleep, dunno when I’ll next get chance.’ 

He leans awkwardly to kiss her on the cheek, guessing that it’s the right thing to do. ‘Seeya Bobbi.’ 

She reaches up to trace her fingers against the line of his jaw, and Clint is lost as to why it makes him feel so horribly guilty. With soft eyes, she says, ‘Stay safe.’

‘I’ll try.’ He manages to rasp out as she walks away. The words feel inadequate, and so does he. The familiar feeling of _not good enough_ weighs heavily in his stomach and follows him along the corridor as he heads towards his room. 

None of them sleep that night, and in the typical contradiction of time as it passes, the night drags on for far too long, and the morning comes around far too soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our Assassins head to Lebanon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, absolutely all the love and thank you's to im_ridiculous, who has been wonderful throughout this whole thing. And big love to the 1.3 people that still want to read this. You are all my favourites. Feedback (of any variety) is always embraced!

They are sent in as a couple of honeymooners, with instructions to play up the romance enough to draw the attention of a diplomat who often gets a little too possessive over things he doesn't own, and avoids practising his trade as often as possible. 

It should be easy. Over the years of their partnership such a setup had become routine. 

It had made sense. 

But now as they board the plane it’s like falling through the rabbit-hole. 

The world is upside down and Natasha feels too large all of a sudden, a stranger in a strange land, her red hair a warning flag to the civilians around them. Exhaustion is beginning to overwhelm her, the events of the last twenty four hours catching up. She’s nervous and she cannot understand why. 

Where Clint would have once grabbed her hand to maintain their cover is now taboo, crossing a line that was drawn the night before, when she avoided his touch and closed the door in his face. 

She clenches her empty fist and smiles thinly at the air hostess as she stands aside to allow Clint into the seat by the window. 

He glances at her as she slides into the seat next to him. Unsurprisingly for the both of them, (because it always was and it always had been, and it probably always would be) Clint is the first to break the silence, leaning in close as he studies the fake passports, his voice inaudible above the chatter on the rest of the plane.

“John and June, huh? Think SHIELD are ever going to employ anyone with an imagination?”

Natasha looks at him blankly and answers. “No.”

He winces almost imperceptibly, and Natasha feels a surge of something uncomfortably close to pity, although she is lost as to why - after all, he’s the one that...The train of thought derails at the same point that it had for most of the night before. She’s still unsure as to what, exactly, had prompted such a reaction. 

She stares at the headrest in front of her, closing her eyes for a second to compose herself, trying to settle back into the professionalism that has served her purposes in the past. Turning to face him, she rests a hand lightly on his forearm, warm and firm under her grip. 

“Let’s just do this, okay? Partners.”

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep on him. She’s just so damn tired. 

***

The next five days fall just short of being normal. 

The assignment is almost irritatingly simple; Natasha charms the target, a man named Bashir Abikhair - an overweight and impossibly hairy diplomat who avoids diplomacy whenever possible - with the potent mixture of her allure and apparent unavailability. 

In a small antechamber off the central courtyard of the Beiteddine Palace it takes all of twenty minutes for Abikhair to reveal the requisite information about trafficking routes in and out of Lebanon that his status within the government had previously concealed. Clint plays the role of a jealous husband beautifully, storming in to the lavishly decorated room and tugging Natasha away from the scene in an act that is disturbingly sincere. 

Later, as they sit side by side on the double bed that they’ve been taking turns to sleep in, his fingers twitch with leftover adrenaline and the morbid desire to shoot something, drumming a staccato beat into the bedsheets as a hollow alternative. Natasha stills his movements with cool fingers around his wrist, releasing it quickly as his movements halt. 

“Will you just stop?” She asks, somewhere between exasperated and amused, but he can’t quite trust himself to know which anymore. 

“Yeah” he says, sitting on top of his hands to eliminate the chances of himself resuming the actions of his fingers. “Sorry... I just-”

“Didn’t get to shoot anything?” She asks, and there’s definitely a wry smirk on her face now. He finds himself mirroring the expression, letting out a huff of air in an approximation of a laugh.

He nods in agreement, amusement morphing into a quiet moment of contemplation resting comfortably between them. 

He knows he doesn’t have to explain that it isn’t actually the shooting he missed.

No. 

He knows she understands the quiet juncture before the release, when the world narrows down to angles and sightlines and the seconds between possibility and inevitability.

She knows because she has shared that viscous moment, has relished living in it for fleeting seconds too. Natasha understands. 

“Haven’t had chance recently.” Clint murmurs, his voice still too loud in the silence that has fallen as they sit side by side. “Bobbi...”  
Natasha rises fluidly, her movements too controlled to be unchoreographed. 

“It’s your turn to take the bed.” she says, her voice carefully even. 

She glances back towards him, supplying ‘I’m exhausted’ by way of explanation for her sudden movements, moving to lie on the narrow couch with her face to the overstuffed cushions. After hours of restless silence listening to each other breathe, eventually they both fall into sleep.

Clint dreams of heavy limbs desperately trying to release an arrow, pulling his arms back with all his strength only for the shaft to sink slowly to the floor, again and again until he snaps the bow in half. 

Natasha doesn’t dream at all. 

They fly back to New York in a hush left thick with everything left unspoken. 

 

***

 

Three weeks later, Bobbi kills a man on a bust gone awry, and Clint goes to find Natasha.

“She just started to cry.” He says, totally bewildered and unable to decode this reaction.

“I cried the first time I killed a man,” Natasha reveals, and his head snaps up, shocked.

She continues. “I was seven.”

 

***

Three days later, Bobbi finds Clint again, her face free from blotches and perfectly made up. It scares him a little. She sits him down calmly, a kind smile crossing her face, and this scares him more.

“Clint.” She says, and it sounds final.

It is. 

Her smile slips a little, anxiety bleeding in around the edges of her chapped lips and a distant part of Clint wonders, when was the last time they kissed?

His sniper’s eyes watch her swallowing thickly and he can almost hear her words a beat before she says them. 

“This isn’t working.”

Bobbi doesn’t humiliate him with cliches, because none of them would be true and this he knows is fact. Her words are quiet and final. He’s surprised by the tears that roll down her face because he never thought that he would be any great loss. 

He interjects when her words falter. 

“You deserve better.” he says quietly, because he knows it’s the truth. Bobbi looks up, startled by his admission, her eyes bright with tears.

“Not better, Clint. Just different.”

Her kindness makes him ache, a tightness in his chest that makes his lungs too large and his breaths shaky.

“Bobbi...” He says slowly, surprised by the broken note in his voice. “I mean it. I’m sorry... I wish - I mean... You deserve more. I’m sorry I couldn’t... that I couldn’t give it to you. I hope you find someone...”

He hadn’t realised until now how much he had come to rely on her presence, and the hole it will leave when she isn’t there any longer.

“I hope you find your someone.” he finishes. 

Bobbi closes the door silently as she leaves, but it still echoes with finality.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson does what Coulson does best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi... erm, first off: sorry about the wait. 
> 
> Secondly, hi to any of those that are still reading - YOU ARE MY FAVOURITES. I hope that this chapter is relatively satisfactory and if not, I apologise. Any and all mistakes are my own. 
> 
> I am just playing around with Marvel's characters, I own none of 'em.

Two and a half months on and things were slowly returning to what could be described as normality, if one were to look at life through a such a narrow viewpoint. Clint aimed for wide-views, so didn’t. 

Natasha didn’t acknowledge normalcy as a state of being, so for her it was merely a return to their equilibrium. 

Almost. 

Things had changed. There was a new friction that wasn’t present before in their partnership, as if all of the words that had remained unspoken in hotel rooms and on long-haul flights had piled up and began to chafe. 

Natasha felt red-raw and thinly stretched. 

She had snapped at a small team of junior agents earlier in the week for blocking up valuable corridor space (and escape routes and lines of sight and possibility) with their insistence upon walking quadruple file everywhere that they went. 

The situation had gotten messy both literally and figuratively, with four over-frothed coffees splattered throughout the hall, and one cocky young man doubled over and gasping for air (And mercy. Her reputation preceded her) 

The fracas results in her being called into Coulson’s office for reprimand. She arrives three minutes early to find him waiting for her, poised and ready. 

He sounds weary. “Natasha.” A sigh. “What did they do?”

“They were posing a security risk, Coulson. I made them aware of it.”

He twitches an eyebrow. Phil Coulson was almost toe-to-toe in the minutiae of facial expression with Natasha and she appreciated the subtlety.

She continues. “They were a fire hazard.”

Coulson purses his lips.

“They were blocking the corridor.”

He squares his jaw. Sometimes Natasha hated the fact that he had such control over his facial expressions. It had been a while since she had realised that she actually trusted him enough to care and sooner since that the fact had bothered her. 

Finally, he speaks, veering wildly off-topic. 

“How long has it been since you last sparred with Clint?”

“This morning” She answers promptly.

“Right. And when was the last time you were in one another’s rooms?”

Natasha is thrown. She deflects. 

“I’m sorry? I thought we were going through the disciplinary procedure? I punched a Junior Agent, Phil. Almost unprovoked.”

Coulson remains silent, although his body language is definitely smug. He makes a small note on the pad of unlined white paper before him, too fast for Natasha to read what he has scrawled - although she has the suspicion it is written in Aramaic. 

“Thank you, Natasha. That will be all. You’re dismissed.”

Natasha was highly educated, although memories of learning were often fleeting and confused. However, she had a strong suspicion that leaving a meeting with Phil Coulson would be similar to leaving a Headmaster’s office, only far more bewildering and far less satisfactory. 

She goes to find Clint. 

***

He’s in his room, his voice muffled as he calls for her to enter. 

She wrinkles her nose as she walks in to find Clint inside his duvet cover, arms spread eagled as he stands on top of his mattress trying to make the corners of his quilt and the cover meet. 

Natasha begins to speak without preamble - he wouldn’t have called for her to enter if he hadn’t known it was her, she thinks. She hopes, at least.

“Coulson’s acting strange and you’re changing your covers all wrong.”

She hears a snort from behind the quilt and then Clint throws it off himself, emerging pink cheeked and hair ruffled. 

“I’ve done it now.” He pauses. “What did you do?” He asks accusingly.

“That’s irrelevant.”  
Clint looks down at her from on top of his bed, suspicion and affection warring across his face. He settles on affection and flops himself down like a child. 

“Doesn’t matter anyway.” His eyes search her face again, although Natasha isn’t sure exactly what he’s hoping to find. He eventually settles on something, though, as he leans over to pull up a battered deck of cards, attempting to flourish them seductively. Ridiculously.

She rolls her eyes, pulling his chair out from underneath his miniscule desk that’s empty apart from a wilting spider plant and a few progressively smaller paper cranes and beckons for the cards to deal. 

The familiarity of it all settles deep and comfortable somewhere inside Natasha’s bones. 

Later, she wishes she’d realised that this was never a good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with it! Feedback of absolutely any kind is embraced.

**Author's Note:**

> Eh, at least I'm having fun. I hope if you got to this point you enjoyed it too :)


End file.
